Week #8 – 10 Practicum – Feb 22 to Mar 11, 2022
Reflect on the assessment practices you carried out and/or observed during your practicum.
This submission may be longer, to a maximum of 2 double spaced pages.
I have focused this journal on the formative and summative assessment strategies that I applied in the English Language Arts (ELA) portion of my EDUC 391 Practicum. To find more detailed information on my ELA Unit: “Digital Mini-Book Unit – Writing from an Inspiration,” please read my EDUC 391 Practicum Lesson Plan and Reflection, submitted on April 2, 2022. During my Practicum, I taught seven one-hour Math blocks on geometric concepts of 2D shapes, perimeter, and circumference. I used many similar formative assessment strategies to ELA in the Math blocks. However, I applied a very different summative assessment strategy based on collecting small pieces of evidence over time. I provided the Coaching Teacher with reporting information on each student’s placement on the BC Proficiency Scale on the content I had covered in both ELA and Math.
When I look at the assessment in my ELA Unit through the lens of the Six Tenets, I feel like my Unit was a total flop. However, with that said, I know that it was an “Experimental” Unit, my Coaching Teacher did remind me to go easier on myself in my reflections, and sometimes the best learning opportunities come through our mistakes in life.
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Assessment Purpose: I used formative assessment daily to guide my lesson planning by tracking student progress with attendance and daily notes on student progress. During my Formal Observation, I created an exit ticket to determine if any students required additional help with the app they were using. Unfortunately, I did not use any form of assessment at the beginning of my time with the class to find out where the students thought they needed the most help in their writing. My highly detailed summative assessment rubric proved to be less helpful to the students in their learning, their self-assessment, or providing my final reporting to the Coaching Teacher than I anticipated it would be.
Communication of Results: I believe that the students appreciated my feedback when I was able to work with them one-on-one. As we worked together formulating their story ideas and editing their digital versions, I could sense that I was the first to give them feedback that pushed their writing boundaries based on where they were at in their individual writing levels. I was only asked to provide the teacher with a simple report of “emerging/developing/proficient/extending” on each student at the end of the Unit. I will never know what the Coaching Teacher showed to the students or put in their digital report cards for this Unit. I feel a little sad knowing that my entire day of meticulously editing their books, providing them written feedback, and detailed comments on their rubric was likely for my learning opportunity only. Yet, the further away from my practicum I get, I also can understand why the Coaching Teacher may not pass it back to them. I imagine the return of my feedback could have been overwhelming to some students. Now that I think about it, I had some hesitation from my alternate students at the start until I was able to add a relationship piece and they could see the learning opportunities one can gain through working through corrections.
Accurate Interpretation: The good thing about my rubric was at the end of that very long day, I could say that my summative assessment of the student’s projects was fair and jam-packed of evidence to support my position on why I reported where each student landed on the Proficiency Scale regarding the Unit. This was really a lesson in breaking it down and putting it back together. It was hard sometimes when a student fell in between two of the columns to decide where to place them on the Proficiency Scale, and then it was hard again to find a balance when a student was “Extending” in some criteria and “Emerging” in others.
Assessment Architecture: In reflection, I need to work on adding in more purposeful formative assessments throughout lessons. I know that I am really good at gaining consensus feedback and love democratic classrooms, but designing assessments on student learning that is not for purposefully gathering summative evidence for reporting is a skill that I will need to acquire in the upcoming months. I enjoyed learning about project-based assessments for Curricular Content and Competencies in this Practicum; this is one thing that my Coaching Teacher excels at with her students. It is also something that works very well with the Digital Reporting system. Had I not needed to give a set number of “lessons” in my practicum, I would have liked to have tried this.
Instructional Agility: After reading my Coaching Teacher’s notes on my Formal Observations, I felt much better about how often I pivoted off my lesson plans. Her notes were evidence of my response to the needs of the students in the classroom. It was a collection of a few minutes to review a concept from the day before, or an adjustment to bring together two students struggling on the same area, or quick moments to bring the whole class back together for an explanation. During my practicum, one of my biggest realizations was that we never finished one of any of my lessons. My super people-pleasing drive was the primary culprit.
Student Investment: In the class of 25 students, I conducted a poll with the students using emoticons on day one. I knew instantly it was going to be an uphill struggle, as most of the emoticons were sad or neutral faces in regard to the Unit idea I had pitched. As I built relationships with the students, especially on the ski days, I could see their buy-in slowly growing for the Unit. By the third week, some of the students who were very oppositional the first week had become invested in their stories and in advancing their writing skills. I know in my next practicum that I will be spending more time with the students, building relationships during those observation days to reduce that transition time.